Netherlands to build world’s largest network of EV fast-charging stations

19 Comments on "Netherlands to build world’s largest network of EV fast-charging stations"

Arthur on Fri, 12th Jul 2013 10:57 pm 



Yesterday major decisions were made in the Netherlands regarding energy: before 2023 6GW onshore and at least 4.4GW offshore wind are to be built, which is enough to provide ALL households with renewable electricity. Scaled to Germany it would mean 50 GW and on US scale it would mean 208 GW or 208 standard conventional 1 GW powerstations in 10 years time and would catapult the Netherlands from a renewable backwater to the upper European regions. Well, better late than never.

Newfie on Fri, 12th Jul 2013 11:24 pm 



Where will the electricity come from ?

Arthur on Fri, 12th Jul 2013 11:36 pm 



From all sources. Where I live I see a growing number of solar panels appear on roofs in my neighbourhood. Soon an avalange will be triggered, since nobody wants to stay behind his neighbour.lol Remember that by 2030 there will be fossil still at 2005 levels. By 2023 all households will be covered by wind alone and most roofs will have solar, that could be used for transport. Obviously industry still needs to be fed with fossil, but that can be replaced in the decade 2023-2033. Spoiler of course could an international financial collapse.

Norm on Fri, 12th Jul 2013 11:53 pm 



Its scary the ‘feel good environmentalism’. They put a couple square meters of solar on the roof of each charger station. Why? So the naive will feel good, dreaming that a tiny solar panel is powering their car. In reality the car is using 100 or 500 times more than the pretend solar panel. Feeding the naivete in this way is unwise. A parallel topic is ‘greener than thou’ attitudes. Results in recycling a grocery bag, but driving 30 miles to get the groceries.

DC on Sat, 13th Jul 2013 12:39 am 



Electric Mass-Transit=Good

Electric Private Tranport=Bad

While moving people by electricity is vastly preferable than what we have now, using EVs to keep car-dependency going, will fail. Not because EVs are ‘bad’ per se, but simply because a car is car. And the the biggest problem with cars, are the cars themselves. Giving everyone an EV will do NOTHING to resolve the other 99% of the problems cars create.

GregT on Sat, 13th Jul 2013 1:02 am 



16,800,000 people with 200 charging stations capable of charging between 48 to 96 cars per day each, all by 2015?

Better to stockpile bicycle chains, tires, and inner tubes. The electric car solving our transportation dilemma, is a fantasy.

DC on Sat, 13th Jul 2013 1:43 am 



The ‘dilemma’ of course is that our cities and towns are now all uglified strip malls. Totally incapable of being retrofitted back to walkable, bikeable, and transit friendly. Our bylaws and building codes MANDATE car-dependency, to the exclusion of all else. GM and Chevron, Firestone etc, knew what they were doing when they set up society to become slaves to there toxic products. We cant afford to move forward, and we cant afford to go back. All our options have been foreclosed, but one(supposedly).

The privately owned,corporate (financed) 2.5 ton(electric) grocery fetcher. The oil-auto cartel never intends to let EVs become anything more than a curiosity, or toys for the 1%. But we will waste lots of time and energy trying to build out ‘infrastructure’ to support EVs. What’s even stranger still, is no one seems to make the obvious connection. If we are trying to replace gas with evs, its clearly because the gas model has fatal flaws in it.

So why are so many people determined to replicate the failure, except this time with EVs?

BillT on Sat, 13th Jul 2013 2:05 am 



GregT, when you do the math, you ruin the techie wet dreams.

Let’s see… 200 outlets = ~20,000 vehicles per day.

One (1) WAWA gas station in the US can handle ~ 6,000 vehicles per day, so it would take 3 WAWAs to equal 200 toy chargers. Since there were about 100,000 gas stations in the US, we would only need six million plus toy chargers to replace them.

Nah, not going to happen! Too many hurdles and as DC said, we don’t need personal vehicles, we need public transit.

GregT on Sat, 13th Jul 2013 2:55 am 



DC,

I completely agree with you. The North American suburban model is doomed to fail. Time to move to a rural location.

Europe, on the other hand, is a much different matter. With a massive population in such a small area, walking, cycling, and public transport will easily work. The biggest problems facing Europeans, in the not so distant future, will be drinking water, and food production.

Arthur on Sat, 13th Jul 2013 4:09 am 



Greg, playing the devils advocate… your math only would apply if every filling station would have one plug, which is of course nonsense. In reality every station can have 10, 20-100 charging plugs, that’s not the issue. The real issue of course is the amount of energy available.

I agree with DC and others that the old ways of mass transport are unsustainable and have opted for minimizing the need for physical transport and replace it with virtual transport over the wire in case of shopping, education, consultation, meetings and the 60% or so office workers. Obviously some form of transport will be needed for production workers, doctors, emergency services, lovers.lol. It is not necessary to continue to use the standard five seater with standard occupation rate of 1.2 but rather switch to 20kw devices like this one here:

http://deepresource.wordpress.com/2012/09/02/lit-motors-c1/

…slashing energy costs from 60 kw to 20 kw. And I can imagine scooter types with even lower energy needs, if you rember that 1kwh is a hard days work and that humans can achieve speeds of 20 kmh all by themselves on a bicycle, producing 100 Watt, than you realize that even 1kw rather than 20 kw is already a big help.
We all agree that fossil is running out in a few decades and that renewable energy is the only option in the long term. So with all things said above I would say go for it.

DC on Sat, 13th Jul 2013 5:10 am 



Arthur, no matter what else happens, un North Americans cant really substitute ‘virtual’ trips with real ones. I know its a common theme of yours, but we already tried a ‘virtual’ economy, and tbh, it didn’t really work out all that well. It gave us fincialization of economy, algorythm stock trading, Amazon and the dot.com bubble. IoW, most of the ‘gains’ to be had by using the interweb have already been realized. There may be a few more things we can squeeze out of the web, but it sure wont create much in the way of new jobs for the permanently under-employed. The webs primary function should not be seen as job-centric, but information.

In N.A. the physical world I inhabit is no more compatible with your virtual nirvanna than my bike is with the pathetic, and dangerous cars-only transportation system I am forced to navigate. If every car I have am forced to ride against now were replaced with an EV, what would change? Well, 2 things. The noise and filthy toxic stink of them would be reduced-but thats it. Nor do I think humans should strive to sit at there comps all day long sending each other updated spreadsheets. We need to tear down the old cars-only world we have now, and replace it with something human beings would be proud to call a home. The visual sewage that is 98% of N.A. has to go. If EV’s were adapted, nothing would change except now there would thousands of fugly charging stations doting the landscape.

Note: only about 1/2 the local cars-only businesses I go to on a regular basis even have bike racks. And dedicated lanes! Forget that. And you wont find a charging stations anywhere either because Dear leader harper and clark don’t believe in non-gas powered transport.

Thats a heresy to them. They do however, believe the earth is 400 years old and things like this:

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=802232

Youll never hear a federal or provincial pol here extolling the virtues of either EVs(few that there are) or Virtual workplaces. Its the lack of real-world jobs in our corporate controlled economy that places a premium on automation, offshoring and downsizing, and not the lack of ‘virtual’ work thats hurting us.

My 2$.

DC on Sat, 13th Jul 2013 5:11 am 



Ghetto edit: 4000 years old-sorry

kolla40 on Sat, 13th Jul 2013 6:14 am 



At presnet the world´s largest network of fast chargers is operational in Estonia – 158 chargers no more than 50 km apart.

http://elmo.ee/charging-network/

Arthur on Sat, 13th Jul 2013 9:32 am 



DC, I am for the moment only concerned about how to prevent a collapse of society at the end of the fossil fuel age. So I am not asking if living online is good for you or fun, I am just trying to figure out how the basic functions of society can be kept going from a technical/energetic point of view and less concerned about .com bubbles, amazon.com or financialization of society.

Coming back to the theme of this thread, e-transport… here some Austrian guys who produced an e-bike that is consuming a meager 250 watt, which is the equivalent of 2.5 grownups helping you to drive the pedals and predictably enable you to reach speeds of 2.5 * 20 = 50 kmh. That is enough for typical commuting distances like 10-15 miles.

http://deepresource.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/e-bike-enorm-v2-custom-cruiser/

This is a powerconsumption of 300 times less than your average European car of 1200 kg and this amount of energy can certainly be generated by the renewable energy system of the future, enabling you to drive 400 km a day, travelling from one fast charging station to the next at 100 km intervals, at an energy cost of 2 kwh per 400 km.

Arthur on Sat, 13th Jul 2013 9:56 am 



One 5 MW wind turbine at typical load factor of 33% can keep going 20,000 of these ebikes all day or 160,000 ebikes for one hour commuting per day. With 7 million commuters in Holland you merely need 40 of these turbines to keep your society going. As an extra advantage, you can use the batteries as a storage medium of renewable energy. One can imagine businesses where you can stop by and click a fully charged battery in your bike, leaving behind the old one for a few dimes.

Arthur on Sat, 13th Jul 2013 10:27 am 



Heeeehaaaa, my city Eindhoven was elected most intelligent city in the world by far by Forbes.lol San Diego and San Francisco ended 2nd and 3rd.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/07/09/worlds-15-most-inventive-cities/

Another interesting detail: all top fifteen cities are ‘European’ (to avoid the too racialist term white), none Asian. Sorry about that, Bill.

We are not dead, not in a long shot, financial crash or no financial crash.

efsome on Sat, 13th Jul 2013 10:38 am 



Reducing tobacco over time doesn’t usually work, you gotta give it up. Same goes for gadgets, it’s better not buying anything you can’t fix.

Everybody needs to check what you really need in order to survive, otherwise our next generation’ll have a pretty hard time living in a ultra polluted world.

Kenz300 on Sun, 14th Jul 2013 10:59 am 



Solar Power Revolution – Here Comes The Sun — Documentary – YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr-grdspEWQ

BillT on Sun, 14th Jul 2013 1:37 pm 



Lots of techie dreams for a world that is not Earth. As DC said, it ain’t going to work in North America (or any where else). No way. No how.

Internet ‘work’ is as mind and body destroying as hard physical labor. That it can be done in an air conditioned drone colony like the ‘call center’ next door is degrading to a self respecting human. But then, we are no longer self respecting humans. We are bots, owned by electronic gadgets and no longer able to make change or multiply three digits without a computer clone in our hand. Unable to live without being ‘connected’ 24/7/365. That is not living, that is Borg country.